World Poetry Day today (as designated by the UN). To honor the occasion, we present “Cosmopolitan Greetings“, the title poem of Allen’s collection, Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems 1986-1992
To Struga Festival Golden Wreath Laureates & International Bards 1986
Stand up against governments, against God.
Stay irresponsible.
Say only what we know & imagine..
Absolutes are coercion.
Change is absolute.
Ordinary mind includes eternal perceptions.
Observe what’s vivid.
Notice what you notice.
Catch yourself thinking.
Vividness is self-selecting.
If we don’t show anyone, we’re free to write anything.
Remember the future.
Advise only yourself.
Don’t drink yourself to death.
Two
Vojo Sindolic‘s 1986 interview with Allen in Belgrade (in two parts – the second part will follow tomorrow) is our focus on The Allen Ginsberg Project this weekend.
Vojo’s translation of Cosmopolitan Greetings (Kozmopolitski pozdravi ) has just appeared from Hrvatskoga društva pisaca (h,d,p) (the Croatian Writers Society)
Here, he introduces the interview:
“Allen Ginsberg and I were very close friends for twenty years from 1977 until his death in 1997. I felt and still feel deep love for his poetic insight, or as one may call it – it was literary … Read More
Allen Ginsberg, in 1993, reading at the Cheltenham Literature Festival in England. The feature today on The Allen Ginsberg Project. Allen reads a selection of poems, (mostly from White Shroud and the, subsequently-published Cosmpolitan Greetings
Introduction: Good evening everybody and some of you I’m sure came to the event where Allen Ginsberg was being interviewed by John Calder here today and will have suffered as Mr Ginsberg did the problems of the weather and British Rail. Years ago Allen Ginsberg wrote of Jack Kerouac that he was the sole full-moving thing, earlier today I’m afraid Allen Ginsberg was the sole … Read More
After the heady interview last week, here’s a somewhat lighter one, a May 1994 appearance on the late night American talk-show “Late Night with Conan O’Brien. We’ve already run his performance of “Put Down Yr Cigarette Rag”, but here’s the whole segment CO: We’re back, folks. Okay, my next guest tonight is considered among the most important American poets of this century. He’s been part of the Beat Generation, the Yippies [sic], and currently [1994] he’s released a collection of poems called Cosmopolitan Greetings. It is a real pleasure to welcome Allen Ginsberg… [Allen … Read More
Last week, we broke the news of Michael Schumacher‘s upcoming Ginsberg digest – The Essential Ginsberg, this week, more publication news – Publishers Weekly announced the upcoming “I Greet You at the Beginning of a Great Career“, the selected correspondence between Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg, edited by Bill Morgan, due out from City Lights later in the year – “The majority of letters collected here have never before been published and they span the period from 1955 until Ginsberg’s death in 1997. Facsimilies and photographs enhance the collection, an evocative portrait of an inspiring … Read More
We feature today a reading by Allen, recorded, just a year before his death, on April 11, 1996, at the Evans Auditorium, Southwest Texas State University. A noticeably weakened Allen – “I have bronchitis, so if my voice fails and I start coughing…” (and cough he does, finding it necessary to bum cough drops from the audience). He is accompanied by Steven Taylor (“We haven’t played together in half a year or so, so.. but we played together for twenty or thirty years.. twenty years..” The tape begins with an introduction by Steven M Wilson, Associate Professor … Read More
We featured one yesterday, so here’s another poem from the collection, Cosmopolitan Greetings – Poems 1986-1992 Inserted here without comment (and for all the obvious reasons)
For all our Spanish-speaking readers, Luis Costa Palacios’ piece, in Diaro Cordoba, recalling, twenty years ago, Allen’s visit to that city, is well worth a read. He came, as part of a delegation to the XVII Congreso Internacional de Aedean [Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo Norteamericanos], and his appearance, in Palacios’ words, “suscitó una enorme expectación” (sparked a huge buzz), “fue sorprendente” (was surprising) – “su producción poética, una de las más poderosas e influyentes de los últimos cincuenta años, es magnífica y variada, como se puso de manifiesto en aquel recital. Había en su tono y actitud algo grandioso, … Read More
